The inventors are aware of websites offering consumers the option of ordering individual nutrient substances from a menu and having these shipped to the consumer either pre-blended or for blending by the consumer in ratio's which the consumer chooses thereby to obtain a custom nutritional supplement composition.
A drawback of these and similar methodologies of preparing custom nutritional supplement compositions is that certain combinations are unpalatable and a need exists for a system and method for providing consumers with custom nutritional supplement compositions which contain the desired nutrients in the desired amounts, by ratio, as well as being palatable and even pleasant to consume.
Current practice in the manufacturing of customized nutritional supplements are based on a client specified combination of nutritional ingredients with the option to add a “flavour pack” which contains a standardised mixture of substances with the objective of altering the flavour of the mixture. However, the inventors are aware that it is not possible to produce a standard flavouring mixture which is effective and economical for all possible combinations of nutritional ingredients.
In other instances a “customisation service” is offered in which it is assumed that the recipe is adjusted by skilled human intervention after the client's criteria is received, in which case the process cannot be effectively and efficiently automated without the use of the current invention. The cost and time of each intervention is also saved through this invention.
The prior patent applications related to customized nutritional supplements, pertain to the collection of subjective and/or objective data relating to an individual, and the formulation of a combination of nutritional substances based on this data, with the objective of optimizing the benefit derived from these products in terms of the individual's health or appearance. Other patent applications also include methods and devices for dispensing customized supplements (WO2005069181 A1, US20020082745 A1, WO2013130576 A1).
The invention which is described below has as its object to ameliorate the problems described above and to provide a palatable custom nutritional supplement.